User talk:Fyzixfighter

You added the list of stars and constellations that do not have basic in reality. I have some memory loss, so I dont want to change the page without someone double checking, but I seem to remember Wolf 359 is a real star with a companion black hole, so Wolf could be removed from the list

True, but in the SC2 universe, Wolf is a constellation, whereas the in real life Wolf 359 is a single star. Are there other Wolf stars, like a Wolf catalog of stars? There's also a type of stars called Wolf-Rayet. Imho, since its not a star-star or constellation-constellation correlation, I think that it would belong on the list. We can always include a mention of Wolf 359 in the entry, also. --Fyzixfighter 06:09, 17 Nov 2005 (CET)

I seem to recall it being documented somewhere that the HyperSpace starmap shows stars that are actually different from the way that we (in reality) see and name stars in "TrueSpace". Stars in HyperSpace are different from those stars in TrueSpace, even if they have the same name. What we see as Betelgeuse in the HyperSpace map is actually not the same Betelgeuse star that we see right now in the 21st century. I think it's explained as humans, when they see the stars as they appear from HyperSpace, assign their own familiar names to these stars. --Phoenix(t) 07:16, 17 Nov 2005 (CET)

On the hyperspace star map that came with the game: "The positions are based on HyperSpace coordinates, which may be unsettling to some students of TrueSpace astronomy. Defined long ago by Chenjesu stargazers, the constellations are now accepted by all Alliance races as the standard. Due to the great diffuculty in pronouncing the Chenjesu language, each race has translated the names into their own tongue. When it came time for Earth to adopt this system, the United Nations decided to use traditional astrological designations at random." I think I might need to be more explicit on that list, to say that these are the names that are neither real constellation names or individual star names. --Fyzixfighter 08:01, 17 Nov 2005 (CET)

Blast, guess I forgot something when I was moving everything around. IIRC that sentence fragment was part of an intermediate draft of that paragraph and is now redundant. Fixing... --Fyzixfighter 00:37, 2 Dec 2005 (CET)

Hey FyzixFighter, is there some rule preventing you from obliterating this page? --Shiver 05:41, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

FYI, people complained that my old cargo images taken from the UQM content were too tiny. We should probably use the wiki software to scale those up 2x (and the new ones you uploaded) for wherever they are used in articles, unless somebody wants to scale them manually and upload new versions.
-Fadookie 01:37, 16 January 2006 (CET)

Thanks for the reminder. Yeah, I remember seeing the comments about that and agree the raw images are much too small. I believe <crossing-fingers> that I uploaded copies of all the raw images, except those that had already been uploaded. Not being a really aesthetic person, I avoided figuring out the right scale but, like you've already noted, the wiki software can easily resize them to whatever we decide on. I hope I didn't offend anyone or step on anyone's toes when I made those uploads, but I kind of agree with Svdb that it's more honest to present the raw material instead of enhanced images, unless we all agree on how to enhance those images - just my R$ 0.0456600. --Fyzixfighter 04:20, 16 January 2006 (CET)

I agree with you and SvdB about using the straight game content, and not only out of laziness. :)

There are other places for enhanced images... i.e. PONAF. Back when the Ultronomicon was a bit younger, there was discussion about using PONAF's animated gifs of each race's comm screen, but I was against this (as was SvdB if I recall). There is a place for everything, and I don't think that the Ultronomicon is the place for 'enhanced' content, especially if it is scaled to an arbitrary size with an arbitrary resizing algorithm that tries to make the graphics appear smoother than they actually are.

The only kind of pre-upload scaling I would support for the Ultronomicon is nearest neighbor 2x (basic, pixelated scaling), although screenshots of UQM using its internal scalers for purposes of comparison may be appropriate.

What are you planning to do with those footer nav plates? I think they're nice, but main Ultronomicon pages shouldn't refer to pages in the User namespace. — SvdB 05:58, 6 October 2006 (CEST)

Sorry about that - yeah, I was planning on moving them out of my personal namespace. They still might need a little work, but you're right that they should be in the main space. I'll move them over today. --Fyzixfighter 19:45, 6 October 2006 (CEST)

Is there a small database defining all the stars? Or is there any XML files around defining all starnames, their positions in space, their color and their size (how big it should be on a map)? It would be neat to create a vector-based starmap of the 2D-universe... maybe by using SVG. It would not be hard to do it, given the right data :)

-- MrMist

Well, I might not be the best one to answer your question as the limits of my involvement with UQM is basically this wiki. But I can tell you that you're not the first, nor will you be the last to want to do something like this. In fact, several fans have created a number of maps [1]. The topic has also come up on the UQM discussion boards more than once, so I would recommend scanning the threads there. One in particular [2] has a link to the data you're looking for, and tells you where you can find it in the actual game code. Likewise, someone awhile back created a page of Star Coordinates (though it lacks the color and size).--Fyzixfighter 02:14, 17 December 2006 (CET)

There is functionality in uqm that can print a list of all the info you'd need. It's not in XML format, but it would be trivial to change the code to dump it anyway you like. You'd need to compile the game from source in debug mode though.

I'm more interested in creating a completely vectorized map, rather than using loads of bitmaps to draw the elements of the maps. Luckily I found some files in the CVS, that reflects all the constellation positions in simple, readable format. I've made some scripts transforming the data to XML, and I've made a XSLT stylesheet, transforming the document to SVG. I'm attaching a screenshot of the SVG at the current state of development. --MrMist 11:50, 19 December 2006 (CET)

Oh, you're only interested in the stars, not the planets. Right, plandata.c should be enough then.

Note however, that the Ultronomicon is not an image dump for SC2-related pictures. If an image does not go with an article, it doesn't have a place here. I'll leave it for the moment, but don't expect it to last. Actually, even this discussion shouldn't be here. We have the UQM forum for things like this. — SvdB 12:41, 19 December 2006 (CET)

Ah. I see. Well... I though this wiki was supposed to contain all things surrounding Ur-Quan Masters. As for the picture: I just wanted to provide an example to describe the things I've been requesting, and also to document the current progress of development. It was kind of natural to provide a visual example. I did however not expect it to be such a big problem to post a screenshot. Don't worry... I'll quit writing here right away.--MrMist 14:22, 19 December 2006 (CET)

Oh, you wanted to make a starmap for in the Ultronomicon. I misunderstood. In that case a request for information is appropriate here. I apologise for jumping to conclusions. — SvdB 17:47, 20 December 2006 (CET)

Assertion 1: Ur-quan masters equivalent of Star Control II. Assertion 2: Star Control I and Star Control III are in existence. Assertion 3: Full knowledge of Star Control requires full knowledge of series. Assertion 4: Database identified as Ultronomicon deals exclusively with Ur-quan Masters. Conclusion A: Star Control databases must include information on Star Control I and Star Control III. Conclusion B: Database identified as Ultronomicon is incomplete. Query: Unit identified as Fyyzixfighter is directed to either affirm or negate this argument. -A petetionning Daktaklakpak 22:17, 14 February 2007 (CET)

Sorry, that image is not part of the accepted Star Control canon. It is a fan-made image - I'll try and hunt down who created it. In actuality, I believe it is a touched up version of the 3DO spinning image of the ship. The names on it, and the other fan-made images for SC2 unique ships, are for the most part fan-made also, and do not appear anywhere in the canon. The Star Control Writers FAQ is also not necessarily canon. I don't know where the person got the name terawatt from in that FAQ, but it's not from the manuals, the RPRG, or the game itself - therefore, it's fanfic plain and simple. Of course I'm open the idea that I may have missed something (as I discovered as I listened to the 3DO ship descriptions), but please remember how we define canon for the Ultronomicon. Cheers. --Fyzixfighter 04:51, 10 May 2007 (CEST)

Perhaps they used their brains and engaged in critical thinking rather than just replaying SC2 dialogue over and over again to arrive at that conclusion? The VUX laser is, after all, named a Megawatt laser. 68.88.74.19 21:18, 10 May 2007 (CEST)

Honestly I'm fine with people extrapolating when they're creating fan-fiction. However, we strive on the Ultronomicon to stick to canon. Any reading between the lines and critical thinking should be guided by the canon. Also, please don't insinuate that I didn't use my brains nor think critically about this topic. Let me show you how I consider this critically: if someone used their critical thinking to get "Terawatt" then I have to question their reasoning abilities because the jump from Tera- to Giga- (the VUX laser is a Gigawatt not a Megawatt) seems simply based on the general fact that the Avatar laser is more powerful. The SC2 manual states that the Avatar laser has "twice the destructive force of the feared VUX laser" (a point which is confirmed in-game, see also List of weapons for damage]]). A terawatt (10^12) is not twice a megawatt gigawatt (10^9) (or 30 dB greater if you like a log scale - a factor of 2 would be 3dB by the way). It looks like tera- was chosen simply because it's just the next metric prefix above giga-, but why not call it an Petawatt or an Exawatt or a Zetawatt (I think the argument for Zeta- is a little bit easier since a Zetawatt is 240 dBm and a Gigawatt is 120 dBm). We really should then call it a "2 Gigawatt Laser", assuming of course that laser power scales as destructive force, which it may not in such a non-linear regime (I've played with Terawatt/Gigawatt pulsed lasers (~25fs pulses) to drive non-linear processes). I certainly would be interested in knowing the reasoning behind "Terawatt" to see if the reasoning was more subtle and insightful than "Terawatt is the next metric unit above Gigawatt, therefore let's call it a Terawatt".

If you want to call it a terawatt in your gameplay and when talking with others, go ahead, I really couldn't care less; but please avoid non-canon terminology to the Ultronomicon. We certainly would appreciate your help on making the Ultronomicon better, and it would be sad if you don't based solely on this one disagreement of acceptable canon. However, if the adherence to this defined canon is too much of a sticking point, then we are at an impasse and any material you add based on non-canon sources will be removed. --Fyzixfighter 00:41, 11 May 2007 (CEST)

Quick defense in the case of the Terawatt, however, can you say where you found the name x-ray laser? I never heard it.--Gaeamil 06:21, 13 May 2007 (CEST)

It is named so in the 3DO ship spin video. I don't know where it can be found on the Internet, if it can - I don't know if Fyzixfighter had the 3DO SC2. Valaggar 07:52, 13 May 2007 (CEST)

Are those the videos where the ship rotates while a female voice describes them? If so, they're all on the Pages of Now and Forever.--Gaeamil 07:54, 13 May 2007 (CEST)

Yep, that's where I found them (I don't have the 3DO version personally). Go here [3] and click on any of the ships on the left to play the videos. --Fyzixfighter 08:07, 13 May 2007 (CEST)

We can use the 3DO Ship Spin images together with in-game/Databank pictures on ship pages. I just wanted you to know that, I don't think anyone has any objections. Valaggar 11:48, 13 May 2007 (CEST)

There was some similar discussion in regards to including animated gifs for the spec images over on Talk:Blade. I'm inclined to agree that moving images/video on the page would be distracting, and a steady state image is preferable. I'm also not sure if the hi-res movie files are still up on fileplanet, leaving us with only the lowres vids on PONAF. I think including a link to the specific page on PONAF with the 3DO video would work, without being too distracting and still providing access to the info, but I'm still mulling over the manner of including the link (in a template, external link section, see also section, in-line link,...). --Fyzixfighter 23:04, 13 May 2007 (CEST)

So we should indeed use the images, and make them link to the 3DO videos? Sounds good. Valaggar 13:02, 14 May 2007 (CEST)

Depends on which images you're talking about - I'm not exactly certain I understand which images you mean. --Fyzixfighter 17:18, 14 May 2007 (CEST)

I mean screenshots from the 3DO videos. However, I don't see a method to take them - my screen capture software (both 2 programs) don't capture that well, and RealPlayer doesn't seem to have a "save" option. There must be a way anyway. Valaggar 17:31, 14 May 2007 (CEST)

Yeah, I've been meaning to get to that list but school/work has been quite busy as of late (I'm only posting now because I'm waiting on a measurement). I'd definitely be in favor of getting rid of the Lyrae star pages and Beta Andromedae - those are completely non-notable. The Centauri stars I hesitate on since they're close to Sol (and Delta C. is actually somewhat notable - most # of BioUnits on a single planet) but the same could be said for Lyrae and Canopus - but I think Centauri has a slightly more prominent position in pop sci-fi simply because of Alpha Centauri so some people might find those of interest. I'm torn on Achernar, Canopus, and Capella since those are single star "constellations" and we have pages on other non-notable constellations. But since this a wiki and not paper (it's all just electrons), eventually it might be nice to have pages for every star. My preference though would be to start on the notable stars before doing the non-notable ones. Let me think on a bit more before I do something (I should have time this weekend). --Fyzixfighter 00:16, 2 June 2007 (CEST)

Cluttering the wiki means cluttering the "Random page" feature, and this I don't like. Plus, we have Sage's planetary database.

It might, but we've also had instances of anons creating random user names and then vandalizing several pages. Also, I am but a lowly sysop, only able to delete, undelete, rollback, and ban - User:Svdb (aka meep-eep) is the administrator/bureaucrat/maintainer of the Ultronomicon and would set those kind of things. I'm sure he's already considered that option, so you'd have to ask him why this isn't done. Honestly, I don't mind devoting a lot of time to fighting the anon vandalism - there's little else that I intend to add (I usual compare new edits to canon and make stylistic edits these days), and fighting vandalism is a way to defend something that I and others have put a lot of time into. We've also had good contributions from anons, so the price of fighting the spam/vandalism is worth it for me. --Fyzixfighter 19:15, 13 December 2007 (CET)

And you do it all so well too :) --Zeracles 03:05, 16 December 2007 (CET)

Do you have any idea why the wiki is under siege right now? We might need to take more drastic measures if this is going to be a long-term problem. --Shiver 23:06, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

That is a really good question - this is really starting to get annoying. Doing a google search for some of the phrases the anon-IPs (especially the ones with misspellings) shows that a lot of online forum/comment sections are getting hit by this same bot. The IPs geolocate to a bunch of different places so maybe the bot is spoofing IPs. And looking at most of the edit summaries it uses, it looks like the bot is using brute force to get past the captcha protection. My guess is that SvdB is aware, but perhaps it would be good idea to email him. As much as I am reluctant to suggest it, perhaps disabling editing by anonymous IPs is the only way to stop this - but SvdB is the only one who can make that change I believe. --Fyzixfighter 00:47, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

I have added a -spoiler warning- in this part of the wiki. I acted in good faith as you already understood. I read the main page about the spoilers section after you have repaired my addition(spoiler warning).

This is not my wiki to control and I respect that. Allow me to express my disagreement though.

Concerning the part about the destruction of the flagship, what exactly does it serve?

You, or someone, might say "hey this is a plot element of the flagship", yes I agree with that. Why don't you add a plot section(like in wikipedia)? You can put all the spoilers in a plot section.

I went in the flagship part because I had a question concerning the sideway guns and instead I found that the ship is going to be destroyed. Whenever I go to (for example)wikipedia to check if a movie is good, I skip the plot and I check the criticism and the general receive of the press. Here, in this article, how could I ever skip it?

What is the purpose of giving information for a weapon system (in the game) to someone who doesn't know the game, when in the same time you throw him spoilers?

Don't get me wrong, I understand the "spoiler policy" of this wiki, does this wiki understand how to manage it's "spoiler policy" though?

The reason I wrote here was because I didn't know any other way to communicate with you. If this was the wrong place, please feel free to delete the comment.

I can understand your disagreement and consternation. Sometimes it can be difficult for those of us who have played the game so much to predict others' intents when exploring the wiki. As to your suggestion of creating separate sections, it might work, but I have some reservations about it. My main worry would be that each section would contain only a few sentences, which may not look very nice. Your comparison to movie articles on wikipedia isn't perfect because each movie has tons of other stuff to talk about besides the plot - here not so much. I think the closest thing we do have is a "Gameplay Notes" section on some of the pages, but even then the spoiler information is still in the main body of the article. Also, I don't see a "plot" section working for every article (indeed for most articles) with spoiler information. In my experience, the spoiler policy is adequate (and similar to other video game wikis) because of the limited size of the SC universe and it works with most articles. Your concern would best be handled by better organization of material (if possible) rather than revamping the spoiler policy. Honestly, that is something that is still needed on several of the pages, for example the Flagship page as you noted, so that the information is organized into a coherent and allows the reader to easily navigate it. If I have time, I might take a look into it, but if you're up to it, go ahead and take a shot at it on the Flagship page (but, like all of us, be ready to have your work edited by others). I'd recommend looking at some of the ship pages as something of a guide - IMO the general format used on those pages could be easily adapted for the Flagship and can accommodate a Plot/History/whatever section (I would lose the tactical overview section though). How does this sound? --Fyzixfighter 18:45, 22 December 2008 (CET)

As this question was about Spathi, the answer was provided by FF & PR3. The unrelated part about VUX should belong to corresponded article, and if the answer was provided. As of now, this part looks alienated to the whole article, and should be removed.

By the way, this should be a common thing to other reference types, like:

Aricle about X

Notes and references:

Somebody: Who are X and how do Y look like and where are Z from, etc.

FF and PR3: X are ... Once upon a time they lived on the planet of... Soon they encountered the culture of ...

As you can see, only the first part is answered and it is related to proper article. This way, Y and Z should be cutted, and they distract of main part and do not contribute at all.

First off, welcome and thank you for taking an interest in the project. It's always nice to have fresh blood around here. I'm sorry but I respectfully disagree with you on a few points. For one thing it is disingenuous to alter quoted text without some kind of indication (brackets for added words, and ellipses for removed text). If this were a long extended quote, only part of which addressed the topic, and was worked into the main body then I would agree with you. However, this is a very short snippet and in my view the amount of distraction it causes is negligible. It's also not in the main body where clarity is much more important, but in the notes and references section where I feel completeness and transparency are important. That said, if others also feel that the second part is distract then I would be fine with cutting it and indicating the omission with "..." or "[...]", though it might look kind of funny. --Fyzixfighter 19:06, 21 January 2009 (CET)

Thank you for welcoming me and letting me know about the requirement to indicate the changing of quoting. I don't know how much people left here that still edit the articles and look for some minor things. This may appear negligible and most people would ignore this. But for the sake of rightness and accuracy, yes, this would be good to segregate such parts. As the main parts are already complete. Masterius 14:19, 22 January 2009 (CET)

I haven't played The Ur-Quan Masters in a LONG time, but I seem to remember if you punched both the afterburner, turn, and the guns at the same time, he'd display three arms pushing three different buttons, or maybe four. 99.160.9.30 00:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It is possible however that those could have been feet stomping on pedals. It was a 40x40 pixelled square, after all. 99.160.9.30 00:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I have played the Ur-Quan Masters. I go to Beta Orionis I, homeworld of Umgah, and I conversed them and they gave 2 Drone ships and joined the Alliance, but the player can't buy a ship at starbase. --Videogamer13 12:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

One of the principal ways to tell if a race joins the alliance is if you can build their ship at the starbase. There are several examples, like the Pkunk, the Yehat, and the Arilou, which provide occasionally provide ships for your SIS escort fleet, but they do not officially join the New Alliance. Again, this is evident from what ships you can build at the starbase, ie native alien captains are being sent to the earth starbase. With regards to the Umgah, I remember them making you the "Great Hero", but quickly changing it to "Great Enemy" because of their strange sense of humor. But perhaps I'm remembering it incorrectly. In your view, what do the Umgah say that makes you think they join the Alliance? --Fyzixfighter 20:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know, they say you are the "Great Hero" and they gave 2 Drone ships to Vindicator. --Videogamer13 11:56, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Just like the Al-Qaeda war against US, and just like Christian/Jewish Alliance against the Muslim. The Ur-Quan Hierarchy have threaten the Alliance on the first threat to start a war. Like a religious war, the Al-Qaeda terrorists destroy the World Trade Center on New York on the first threat on Sept 11, 2001, then the Christian/Jewish Alliance (US-Israel Alliance) strikes back. The Ur-Quan Hierarchy is similar to Islam, and the Alliance are the Christianity and Judaism. --Videogamer13 15:39, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Did the Utwig join the Hierarchy? --Videogamer13 06:29, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. Joining the Hierarchy happens one of two ways - actively seeking out the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za with the intent to join, or being conquered by the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za. The only known example of the former is the Mycon. The Kzer-Za never got to the Utwig, and several other races like the Supox and the Druuge because of the arrival of the Kohr-Ah, which re-initiated the Doctrinal Conflict. The Utwig were beginning to be attacked by the Kohr-Ah (not the Kzer-Za who run the Hierarchy) when this happened. There is the possibility that, based on your actions, the Utwig become hostile to you, attacking you on sight, but hostility towards you is not the same as joining the Hierarchy. --Fyzixfighter 15:05, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

If the player talk too much about the Androsynth to them, the Orz will attack the player. But why the Orz never join the Hierarchy? --Sc2player 07:36, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Hostility towards you is not the same as joining the Hierarchy. Joining the Hierarchy happens one of two ways - actively seeking out the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za with the intent to join, or being conquered by the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za. The only known example of the former is the Mycon. The Orz cannot be in the latter group since the Kzer-Za are probably unaware of them, or if they are aware are too distracted by the renewed Doctrinal Conflict to care at the moment. Again, hostility is not the same as being part of the Hierarchy. For example, the Kohr-Ah also attack the player, but they are definitely not part of the Hierarchy. --Fyzixfighter 15:09, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I have a problem with logging in to forum site. But I have already registered, when I log in and I get an error message. --Videogamer13 17:54, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Wish I could help, but I don't frequent the forum much and I have nothing to do with its operation. Sorry. --Fyzixfighter 20:22, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

What does the error message say? --Zeracles 04:58, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

It says "sorry, log in failed", and I don't know how to validate an email. --Videogamer13 10:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Assuming the procedure hasn't changed since 2007, you should have received an email from ``The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum" containing a link that you must click on to activate your account. --Zeracles 11:17, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure? I see that the latest member there is videogamer. Isn't that you? It indicates you've never logged in. You do that by entering your username and password here. --Zeracles 03:19, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that is my profile. I can't log in and it says "Your email address needs to be validate before you can log in", but I don't know how to validate an email address. And I just entered activation code correctly that I already know but it doesn't work and it says "invalid activation code". --Videogamer13 14:13, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, not sure how to help here. Maybe if you ask meep-eep (svdb@stack.nl). You might also have better luck at SCDB. --Zeracles 14:48, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

The game is still continue and not lost yet when the Kohr-Ah reached Earth during the Death March. Only one way to lose the game by the Flagship is destroyed. So, why the game ends after the Death March? --Videogamer13 20:36, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking what is the rationale for the game ending when the Death March reaches Earth? I'm guessing the reason is because, when the Kohr-Ah get to Earth, they destroy the Earth Starbase thus making it impossible for you refuel/recrew/repair the flagship so you're effectively dead in space, or soon will be. It also makes the end movie/cinematics impossible, so from a game design perspective it also makes sense. I guess there is the alternative that in-game you could still destroy the Sa-Matra and to avoid the adrift-in-space death scenario, you find a suitable planet, make one last landing and set up a last colony of humanity (a la Battlestar Galactica), but again that would require the game designers to have created an additional movie/cinematic for this alternate ending. It's also not really a victory, likely not even a pyrrhic victory. You probably don't have enough crew for a minimum viable population and the new colony will unlikely survive more than a few generations.

Or are you asking why the Ultronomicon says this is what happens? I'm assuming because that's what does happen in-game, but honestly I've never let it get that far so can't personally confirm this. --Fyzixfighter 03:30, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I know that Kohr-Ah cleanse all of the sentient life are the Druuge, Mycon, VUX, Orz, Spathi, Zoq-Fot-Pik, Arilou, Umgah, Thraddash, Supox, Utwig, Yehat, Pkunk, Ilwrath and Humans. But why the Kohr-Ah didn't cleanse the Syreen, Shofixti and Chmmr? --Videogamer13 17:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Simple answer: it's programmed that way - IIRC during the death march the center of the Kohr-Ah sphere of influence moves to the nearest sphere of influence center, exterminates that race, and then repeating the process until all spheres of influence are gone, before moving to Sol. The Syreen, Shofixti and Chmmr don't have spheres of influence so we don't see when or if the death march gets to those places after the game over condition. From a game play perspective this is appropriate since it is very easy to see whether a sphere of influence still exists on the star map, and see how close one is to the game over condition. From the game universe perspective, I would imagine the Kohr-Ah would probably go after them eventually, probably after wiping out earth. They probably go after the major sources of civilizations that they can easily detect (the most likely threats) and later go after the minor, slave-shielded worlds (not major threats after all). Perhaps earth is the first they go after, and the Chmmr, Syreen and Shofixti are next, but we don't find out because we don't see past the game over condition (see the ending of Only You Can Save Mankind). --Fyzixfighter 02:12, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Spambots that register an account to spam should be banned without expiration date. This makes it easier for the eventual 'clean up useless accounts' day, where thoroughly inactive accounts with an infinite ban period can be wiped away quickly. IPs should not be banned indefinitely, obviously, but I sincerely doubt someone is ever going to use those accounts again.

Neither would I worry too much about blocking account creation; you fix that when you clean up the accounts. Anyway, just a suggestion. --Svip (talk) 13:40, 27 August 2012 (CEST)

Just wanted to let you know that I appreciate that you're still so consistently fighting the spammers on the Ultronomicon.
(And of course I appreciate the contributions of others as well.)
If you know of a way that I can make this easier, please let me know. — SvdB (talk) 18:54, 10 December 2012 (CET)

Thanks. The others and I do what we can and I'm sure that I'm being far too generous in giving a lot of these new accounts the benefit of the doubt. As to a way to make this easier, I don't know for certain. We're already using captcha for username registration and new users have a certain wait period before they can edit, correct? I've been looking at MediaWiki's Combating spam and Anti-spam features, and I wonder if using the DNS-based blacklist and/or participating in Project Honeypot might be useful. The advantage seems to be that there is already mediawiki support for those features. Another possibility (but I don't know how easy it would be to implement or if mediawiki supports it) might be when registering a new username to require an email address and to have the user confirm registration through a link provided in an email, similar to how I've seen some other sites (and honestly I don't recall if we already do this). Anyways, just some thoughts. --Fyzixfighter (talk) 03:30, 11 December 2012 (CET)

Ok, I've set up the use of DNS blacklists now. Let's see if this pays off. If it doesn't, I'll enable confirmed email addresses for account creation and edits.

And yes, we are using a CAPTCHA for editing by anonymous users and for creating new accounts. And unconfirmed users cannot create new pages for 7 days. — SvdB (talk) 20:36, 18 December 2012 (CET)

G'day, just going to state the obvious, that the spam has reached an unacceptable level (again). Not only is the fight against it time-consuming, but the recent changes page is now so dominated by crap that it cannot serve its intended purpose. I tried looking to the Doom wiki for inspiration - from looking at their ``Central Processing" page, they recently encountered spam of the sort we have. See the subheadings ``5 Abuse Filter" and ``21 New AbuseFilter", which appears to have done the job for them. I assume that only the bureaucrats could implement it here, but do you have any other thoughts? --Zeracles (talk) 06:09, 26 July 2013 (CEST)

I didn't mind it so much when it was like 5 new accounts a day and I was still looking for a job so most of my day was free, but now that I have a full time job I can only check the recent changes list in the morning and in the evening. But, yeah, it's getting pretty bad of late. The suggestion in 21 New AbuseFilter looks interesting - 5 successful edits before being able to create a new page, talk page, or user talk page. That might be a good way to distinguish spambots from real humans, until the spambotters figure a way around it. I don't think it would stop the creation of random spambot users though. Two other possibilities that I've thought about are changing the captcha text and simply disabling account creation for a month or so. My guess is the spambotters did a kind of brute force attack to learn the possible captcha answers and now just randomly try one of the known correct solutions each time. Perhaps if the account creation is disabled for a certain amount of time then the wiki would fall off their radar (but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one). My preference would be for the "21 New AbuseFilter" solution and updating the captcha text/answers. --Fyzixfighter (talk) 06:31, 26 July 2013 (CEST)

Yeah, you've done more than anyone else to stay on top of the spam, and well done on the new job! I think you're right, the filter against page creation (user talk pages in particular) by new users and updated captcha should stop the deluge. I PMed a heads-up to Svdb/meep through UQMF so hopefully we'll see what he thinks. --Zeracles (talk) 10:39, 26 July 2013 (CEST)

I've done something different for now: I made a small internal change to the ConfirmEdit extension, which should prevent automated scripts from succeeding, as long as they are not customised for the Ultronomicon. Let's see how it works. — SvdB (talk) 12:46, 26 July 2013 (CEST)